Adventures in Homeschooling Socialization, I guess?

Yesterday (Wednesday, January 26; it's taken me a while to finish this) was beautiful but chilly. First sunny day in a while, but in the low 40s. So the meet-up we usually have at parks on Wednesdays met at a coffee shop. The organizer is a super planner, and did call them and ask if it would be okay. Everyone brought board games. I was on the fence about going, but Mal wanted to take Sum Swamp (a birthday present from Uncle Khrys and Aunt Mei Li a couple of years ago; he still loves it!). I tried to prepare him with the idea that if everyone brought a game, we probably wouldn't have time to play them all,

First, after we'd been there a bit, one of my friends came up and said, "I wanted to come talk to you for a minute before you take off without saying anything." This is what I do. A lot of times, Mal is having fun, and then he's ready to go. So we go. When I got home, I messaged her, "Irish Goodbyes; they're my jam." She texted back, "100%."

I guess I don't understand the point of making sure people know you're leaving. I mean, if I knew we were needing to plan something or someone had told me to check in with them before I left, okay. But there are often 20+ moms and dads at these events. And if I don't tell EVERYONE good-bye, then how do I pick who to tell? If two people are in a conversation, I really don't want to get it off-track by insinuating myself into it just to say, "Miss me, folks!"

Anyway, yesterday, we were there for about an hour. Mal played one game with a friend of his (not the game he'd brought; I was proud of him). Then the other kid wanted to play a different game with a different kid. Mal REALLY wanted to play his game, and his two best friends were in the middle of another game altogether.

There is a sweet maybe 4-year-old boy who is super sweet and friendly. He loves our dog. I think he just doesn't have a lot of language skills yet. He understands things, and responds. He's just a cute little guy who loves playing with everyone, but doesn't talk much. I asked him if he wanted to play Sum Swamp, and he did. Mal got to play, and I helped this kiddo a bit, then his mom realized we were playing and jumped in. Later, she thanked me for showing him the game... and I thanked her for letting him play the whole thing, because Mal was so keyed up to play it. Actually, the boy won. And Mal was a GREAT sport about it! I was pretty proud.

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By the way, yes, it was in the high 40s and yes, my son was wearing shorts and a t-shirt.

Also, since this was indoors and Omicron isn't quite peaked here, AND all of the employees had on masks, we wore ours. I told Mal before the other kids got there, "It's possible that we're the only ones who are wearing masks. That's okay." And we were. It wasn't any big deal.

Later...

Hey, guess what? One of the kids there got sick and tested positive for Covid 2 days later. Fortunately, she's fine; had all of her shots and had a mild case. 

Yesterday (Sunday, January 30), Mal wanted to go to a park we've never been to before (he does this pretty often; it's tricky finding new ones!), so we did. He ended up finding a playmate and hanging out for two hours! I walked the dog around, did some training, was a little bored, honestly. It was a gorgeous day, though.

Okay, well, I was going to write more about planning our upcoming vacation, but Mal is having an existential crisis because he just realized that the house we're going to build isn't going to look like the modern farmhouse $1.4M house we looked at yesterday. So I have to go take care of that.

A Whole New World

It's getting hot. Next week, we should hit the 100s for the first time this year; it's a couple of weeks later than last year, I should mention. As hot and yucky as it was last summer, it was a mild one, in terms of Austin weather. Even this year, our newish across-the-street neighbor has her windows open almost every day, but she's from Florida, which is even worse than Houston, which is apparently a lot worse than here. So I guess we should count our blessings on our sweaty little fingers.

We've been saving quite a bit of money staying home the past few months, but today we took our car in for $350 worth of stuff to have done, only to realize that our brakes are almost shot and whoever installed the rear tires stripped two of the bolts that hold the hub on, so they can't just sell us new tires... we need one new hub. So now we're looking at $1500 worth of stuff. That needs to be done, so we're sucking it up. But still. Saving money was fun while it lasted. (Losing more than that in our 401k wasn't fun, but that's not a "felt" loss the way that forking over money from the checking or savings accounts is. [That was a grammatically correct sentence, even though it sounds awkward.])

Yesterday, Mal mentioned that he wanted to go see the birds at the aquarium, because he was remembering one of them saying "Hello" to us and was convinced that the bird could full-on talk.

We looked it up today, and the Austin Aquarium just so happened to have reopened on Monday. I bought a Groupon (saved $11!) and we headed over, planning at first just to see how many people were there before making a decision about today.

Turns out there were only 2 other groups there; a largish family of maybe 6-8 folks, and a two-parent/one-kid family. We were never in the same room with another person the whole time we were at the aquarium. They've stopped the "interactive" things like feeding the lemurs and whatnot, but Mal doesn't like animals close-up in that way, anyway, so we've never tried that and didn't miss it. They also had the playground and the interactive floor game thing shut down, which we were expecting.

However.

Mal was freaked out the whole time and begged to leave on multiple occasions during our visit. We had a season pass last year, and while he never really enjoyed the tanks with the big old Texas river fish, he was pretty used to everything else. Today, he vacillated wildly between delight -- the birds! the new otters! the stingrays! -- and sheer terror -- the bearded dragon! the giant tortoise!

First, a few things have changed: The kangaroos are gone, and in their place are two other kinds of lemurs (the ones in the front are ring-tailed, and the new ones are black and white, and brown ruffed lemurs). They built a neat hollowed-out log slide and pond for the new otters, which cheeped at us but didn't feel like swimming when we were around.

There were a couple of added tanks of pretty colorful fish toward the end that I don't remember having been there before.

And they got a pair of toucans!

But back to Mal...

When we paid and walked into the first room, he saw the boat where the bearded dragon sits (and literally does nothing, because... lizard) and said, "I can't go in there!!" When I told him he could hold on to me and I'd stand between him and the display, he was equally chagrined because walking through on my other side would position him near the river fish. Fortunately, I was able to distract him with what I think is a pretty freaky eel, but which happens to look just like the eels from Super Mario Odyssey, so he was willing to look at the eel, and I subtly walked him around the displays he didn't want to see while he focused on that.

Mal did have fun in the stingray room, waving and saying "hi!" to the creatures who were used to having hordes of school children feeding them all day, and seemed energized by the company. But there was a fiberglass shark in this room, and Mal didn't want to walk over to see some coral because of it. He finally did, but I had to finesse that, too.

Posing. But also kind of freaked out by the pirate.

We went through the room with the koi and ducks, and Mal did pretty okay there until he noticed the giant tortoise. Granted, that thing weighs more than Malcolm does, but at least today he wasn't trying to climb the wall and escape like he was the last time we were there.

Mal did get to see the birds, and the one that usually says "hello" was not there. But one was very vocal, and would respond to us when we talked. Of course, it was LOUD. I explained to Mal that they have to be loud to communicate in a dense rainforest.

I also realized that I'd left the earphones in my car, and wasn't super pumped to remind him that those exist.

After he chatted with the birds for a few, he was ready to walk out... but then he saw the albino python. We've seen it MULTIPLE times, but this time, it was too much for him. He started yell crying and put his hand over his ears. I told him he could just walk quickly out of the room, and he said, "How about run?!"

He ran into the next and last room, then looked over to see a life-sized replica of a shark's jaw. He FREAKED OUT. It wad like in a horror movie when the protagonist just keeps running into things at every turn.

I had him look at the baby sharks before we left, because I never like for him to end an experience on a bad note. He said he was glad his younger cousin Chance likes "Baby Shark," and all seemed forgotten.

Until we got into the gift shop. He wanted to look around, then I pointed out to him a pretty big orangutan stuffy on the top shelf. He saw it, blanched, and announced, "We're getting out of here!"

So we did.

He's going to have to relearn how to interact with the world.

Why There is a Package of Crumbled Pop-Tarts in My Console

Today, Mal and I took advantage of our family annual membership to the Austin Aquarium (which has gotten SO much better/bigger than when it opened!). Mal is getting more comfortable around the fish, which is cool. He's still freaked out by BIG fish on his level, and I understand that.

Oh! There's a lemur cage when you first walk in, and this beautiful black-faced and otherwise brown lemur was sitting on a branch watching people come in. He had a super long stuffed snake (available in the gift shop!) on the floor. I figured he must really liked stuffed animals, because look...

I seriously thought this hammock of about 10 lemurs was stuffed animals for a hot minute! They were just piled in there, and until I REALLY watched the one face you can actually see and it moved a bit, I thought the other lemur (the only one that doesn't look like these ring-tailed) just LOVED his stuffies. :D

They all got up later and were grooming each other. Man, they're adorable!

After the aquarium, of course Mal wanted to look around the gift shop. While he did, I was kind of accidentally eavesdropping on what seemed to be a job interview (or a contract pitch?). We were just in the vicinity and I have good hearing.

Anyway, one of the employees said, "Thanks; we'll talk to a manager and get back with you." The guy they were talking to then asked if he could see the r/o system. The employee said, "I have to get to work, but hold on and I'll get someone to show you around." The guy explained that was his milieu; he had gone to Haiti after the earthquake and tsunami in 2010.

At some point, I had to use the restroom, and when I got back, this guy had changed shirts. I might not have noticed if he hadn't left his starched pink (with blue stripes!) shirt and tie draped over... what appeared to be almost everything he owned, in one of the chairs in the reading area.

Mal had me look at some books with him and showed me a few trinkets while I took in information: He had a backpack, a large "tote" that is bigger than my 13-gallon trash can, a coat, the clothes he was wearing, and the clothes he'd just removed (I assume he had on a t-shirt under). He was well-kept enough not to have that "transient" look in his eyes and manner. But he was carrying an inordinate amount of stuff.

By the time the other employee came out and told him that he could only show him pictures of the reverse osmosis system, it was obvious that this gentleman is on the Autism spectrum. He looked at the pictures and asked questions for a while, then the employee left.

"That's the smallest r/o system I've ever seen. I'm used to dealing with ones that are this big," he said, referring to the chair.

"Did I hear you say you were in Haiti?" I asked.

He said yes, that the Texas National Guard responded in Haiti shortly after the 2010 tsunami. I asked him where he was: Port au Prince. I explained that when we went in 2013, we found it to be a lovely country, but he insisted I was glad I did not go during recovery; I'm sure he's right. He couldn't remember exactly how long they were there.

Mal was bored and ready to go by this point. I'd ordered half of our meal from Chick-fil-A (yay, mobile ordering!) and he complained, "I'm hungry!" I told him I was almost done, but the gentleman, who was packing up all of his stuff to leave, said, "If your mom will let you, maybe later you can have a PopTart."

I thought he was just being aspirational, but then he dug through his pack and reached out toward Mal... with a sealed PopTart foil.

He said, "You have to be careful with those, because they're kind of broken up; but that's easier for your mom. She can put them in a bowl and pour milk over it and call it cereal. That's what my mom used to do."

So. That's why I have a package of crumbled PopTarts in the console of my car. I don't know what to do with them. I don't know what flavor they are. Sometimes I have hypoglycemia emergencies, so maybe I'll be desperate enough to open them and eat it then. The guy was being genuinely kind; I just didn't expect a stranger to give my kid PopTarts at the aquarium. It reminded me a lot of the homeless guy who used to give us wet wipes. Sometimes, you find kindness in the more interesting places.